Jailed for Possession: Illegal Drug Use, Regulation, and Power in Canada, 1920-1961 (review)

In May of 1921 the Halifax police raided a local Chinese curio and tea shop. The raid, "which created much excitement among the Chinese population of the city," resulted in the arrest of five Chinese men for illegal possession of opium.¹ This arrest, and the police surveillance of the Chinese community which led to the raid, reinforced the assumption, held by many white residents of Halifax, that the Chinese spent most of their time gambling and smoking opium. Indeed, their frequent use of opium made the Chinese appear as a threat to law and order and to the moral fibre of Canadian society generally; a threat that must be tightly regulated. It is this need to regulate an ethnic community, along with the scourge of illicit drugs, that forms one of the central themes of Catherine Carstairs' stimulating book Jailed for Possession: Illegal Drug Use, Regulation, and Power in Canada, 1920-1961. Jailed for Possession is an important book for legal and social historians, as well as for scholars who are interested in studying drug use in Canada and the ability of the state to regulate personal and social behaviour. Not only does Jailed for Possession explore the critical issues that surround the history of drug use and the enforcement of drug laws in Canada, it also reinforces the argument that the "war on drugs", whether in its past or present configurations, is a futile endeavour.

In addition to concentrating upon drug laws and state regulation from 1920 until the passage of the Narcotic Control Act in 1961, Carstairs attempts, rather successfully, to reveal the impact that the enforcement of Canada's drug laws, and its concomitant legal regulations, had upon drug users, the police, doctors, and social workers. By assessing the affect that the law has had on peoples' lives, Carstairs hopes to enliven the "sometimes dull realms of legal history" (p. 13). However, the recent spate of books and articles on the history of crime, moral and social regulation, and the criminal justice system, suggests that legal history in Canada is anything but "dull."² Nevertheless, one of the strengths of Jailed for Possession is that it does not romanticize the lives of drug users. Rather, it underscores their difficult and dangerous lives. Most of Canada's drug users in the period covered by this book were white, working-class men and women. But in the 1920s, the perceived source of Canada's drug problem was the Chinese of British Columbia. As Carstairs aptly notes, the moral panic that was socially constructed around the need to rid Canada of the Asian drug menace was more a product of the crusade launched by the Vancouver press, police department, Kiwanis Club, and Child Welfare Association, than the writings of such prominent figures as Emily Murphy. By devoting most of her analysis to Vancouver, with some attention given to Montreal and Toronto, Carstairs at times generalizes about the extent of this moral panic across the country. Moreover, Jailed for Possession needed to provide more examples of police arrests of the Chinese during the 1920s, such as the one outlined above, in addition to regional newspaper coverage, in order to bolster the argument that most Canadians believed that the country was in the throes of a drug crisis and thus called for tougher drug laws.

By the 1930s, as a result of deportation and the Chinese Exclusion Act, there were few Chinese "hop heads" left in Canada. Yet this did not stop the state from continuing its crackdown on drug users. This crackdown, which often meant fines or prison terms, forced some addicts, according to Carstairs, to switch from smoking opium, which was more easily detected by legal authorities, to injecting or swallowing drugs. Addicts also resorted to desperate measures to score a "fix". These measures included breaking into doctors' offices and traveling from one part of the country to another to locate drugs. Carstairs also discusses...